The present invention relates to an improvement made to an electronic on-street parking meter, and more particularly to a contactless IC card receive & read-write mechanism for an induction type on-street parking meter.
A conventional on-street parking meter in early stage mechanically operates to count and collect parking charges. Such mechanical parking meter includes very complicate parts and components and is therefore uneasy to maintain. Moreover, such mechanical parking meter accepts only coins and not the convenient cards. In recent years, on-street parking meter has incorporated electronic read unit to accept payment by card. Currently, most on-street parking meters provided by various manufacturers of different countries are designed to accept payment by contact smart IC card. A card receiver provided with the parking meter for receiving the IC card is subject to damages caused by external humidity and dust because the parking meter is exposed to outdoor environment. Moreover, the current on-street parking meter accepting IC card has the following two disadvantages:
1. In order to accept an IC card as a payment means, each on-street parking meter is equipped with a card slot and a card reader that are actually a unitary body in the parking meter. In the event the card slot on the card reader is clogged or damaged by foreign matters, it is necessary to dismount or even replace almost the entire parking meter to repair the card slot and the card reader. PA1 2. In a rainy day, when an IC card is inserted into the card reader on the parking meter via the card slot, it is possible rainwater at the card slot would wet electric contact on the surface of the IC card and cause short circuit or poor electrical contact of the IC card with the card reader. PA1 1. With the existing technique, a non-street parking meter mounted outdoors and accepting the contactless or induction-type IC card includes an induction coil that continuously emits electromagnetic-wave signals to detect for any card approaching to the card reader of the on-street parking meter. That is, the parking meter consumes considerable power and the batteries provide therein simply could not supply the power for a prolonged time. Frequent replacement of batteries is therefore needed and inevitably endangers our living environment. PA1 2. Generally, two parking meters are mounted side by side on the same one pipe standard and are therefore very close in their position. When a contactless IC card is unexpectedly moved toward an adjacent parking meter, it is possible the adjacent parking meter is induced to make incorrect read-out and write-in of data and causes confuse and trouble in paying the parking charges
As to another type of smart IC card, that is, contactless smart IC card or induction-type smart IC card, it is currently not easily accepted for using in the existing on-street electronic parking meter for the following reasons: